Former MP for Hove & Portslade 2010 â€“ 2015

Biography

Mike is not re-standing at the General Election in 2015. If you have any election-related questions, please contact Cllr Graham Cox, the Conservative Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Hove and Portslade. Graham’s website is www.grahamcox.org.uk.

Mike has been the Member of Parliament for Hove and Portslade since being elected in May 2010. In September 2013, he was appointed Intellectual Property Adviser to the Prime Minister.

Mike was born in Clevedon, Somerset, in 1957 and moved to Brighton with his parents in 1974. He attended Kent College, Canterbury, and then South Bank University, London, where he was awarded a BA (Hons) in Business Studies. He qualified as a Chartered Management Accountant in 1984 (Fellow 1988) and then also went on to qualify as a Chartered Marketer.

He was Finance Director and part-owner of Newhaven-based Cash Bases from 1994 tom 2000. During this period, the company was awarded two Queen’s Awards – for Industry (1996) and Enterprise (1999). Cash Bases was also Sussex Company of the Year in 1999.

In 2000, Mike was made Financial Controller of the Pete Waterman Group and in 2007 became Vice President (Europe) for the Motion Picture Licensing Company.

An industry expert in Intellectual Property issues, he has used his extensive knowledge of creative industries in Parliament to support UK talent and to campaign for the greater use of Brighton & Hove as a creative hub and filming location. He regularly attends rock and heavy metal gigs and is a keen advocate of live music.

Mike stood as a Parliamentary Candidate in Barking in 2001 and then in Brighton Pavilion in 2005. In the interim, he served as a Councillor in Crawley from 2005-6, before being selected as Parliamentary Candidate for Hove and Portslade in 2006. In 2010, he was elected as the Member of Parliament for Hove and Portslade with a majority of 1,868 votes.

Mike is a qualified ski instructor and football referee (and former centre-forward for Brighton local team the Martha Gunners with his first mention in the Argus newspaper in 1979 for scoring a hat-trick!). He supports Brighton & Hove Albion and may frequently be seen attending matches.

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